Amid a sharp correction in the crypto market, the majority of top digital assets have fallen like a house of cards. A number of digital tokens are also trading sharply below their lifetime peaks.
One such name is Solana, a highly functional open-source project providing decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions. The token is about 85 per cent below its all-time peak of $260. It was trading at $38-odd levels on Thursday, the coinmarketcap data suggests.
Solana has wiped out all the gains it registered in the last 15 months, with its market cap falling below $13.5 billion, according to the data. However, the volumes on the counter have zoomed 38 per cent in the last 24 hours to $1.68 billion.
Solana suffered its latest outage on Wednesday as it fell for over four hours by a bug.
The crypto is best known for its sound blockchain and robust transaction speed. It earned its name of ‘Ethereum Killer‘ in the past when investors were moving into Solana, switching from Ethereum.
Edul Patel, CEO and Co-founder of Mudrex said Solana has faced frequent outages on its blockchain network in 2022. With the recent outage, the token has dropped sharply from its all-time peak.
“The blockchain halted for four and a half hours resulting in its applications being shut down,” he added. “The series of outages have caused Solana community to worry significantly.”
Darshan Bathija, CEO and Co-Founder of Vauld said over the past year alone, it has suffered seven such instances. “Even in the latest instance, a bug impacted the network as it went offline, halting block production for over 4 hours.”
The Solana protocol is designed to facilitate decentralized app (DApp) creation. It aims to improve scalability by introducing a proof-of-history (PoH) consensus combined with the underlying proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus of the blockchain.
Solana is widely considered Ethereum’s competitor for its ability to process transactions faster, said Patel. “However, with continued outages and network congestion, investors might start drifting away from Solana to some other cryptos.”
Solana is known in the cryptocurrency space because of the incredibly short processing times the blockchain offers. The Solana protocol is intended to serve both small-time users and enterprise customers alike.
Though it has been gaining popularity in the NFT and DeFi sectors as it’s considered cheaper and faster than Ethereum, the frequency of outages will surely be of concern, as it will likely slow down its growth, Bathija said.